Meditation Techniques and Meditation Tips

Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are

Fact Number #1. Stress is a certified killer. It’s like a hitman, hired by the devil himself. And it’s designed to twist your mind to unimaginable extents, break it apart bit by bit and pretty much send you on a one way ticket to the mental institute. Heck, if you’re not careful you’d probably end up like one, Hannibal The Cannibal.

Fact Number #2. I don’t care who you are or what your profession is. You’re definitely facing some form of stress in your life. And while a minimal level is actually deemed as healthy, it can easily go overboard. So, you need to learn how to manage the mental torture. Lucky for you I’m going to share a few stress reduction techniques with you in this article.

Don’t sign up for everything on the list

Here’s a harsh, in your face reality of life. If you start biting more than you can chew, people are going to take advantage of you. You may want to come across as the nice person. But remember this. You have physical limitations. And as you begin to realise that everyone in the world is dumping all their excess junk on you, the gung-ho spirit of yours will evolve into a holy-crap-what-am-I-doing kind of feeling.

And even if you’re smart enough not to climb mountains for your colleagues… Odds are, your boss has a tendency to arrow extra work to you. Sadly, these are things you can hardly avoid without taking a nasty blow on your reputation. Nobody wants to be known as the lazy one eh?

But there is a nifty little solution. Plan everything out. Take out a sheet of paper and make a little timetable of sorts. All you really have to do is delegate certain tasks to certain days. Set aside a specific number of hours to complete the assignments given to you. And of course, do your best to stick to your work plan as well.

A little iron pumping doesn’t hurt anyone

The keyword here is exercise. Exercise is a fantastic stress reduction technique. You direct a lot of negative energy towards something positive. You pretty much take out your frustrations on yourself. But instead of beating yourself senseless, pushing your boundaries via the healthy release of exercise actually does you a ton of good.

In a nutshell, you quickly transcend from a pissed off state to a healthier, happier you.

Take a leaf out of Buddha’s book

You don’t have to head to an oak tree and meditate for a hundred days straight. That is a tad unnecessary. But, the simple act of sitting down everyday for 15-20 minutes or so, and just meditating can do wonders. A common misconception people have is that the purpose of meditating it to bring oneself closer to God. I really don’t know who came up with that cooky story.

Here’s what meditation really does for you. You learn to regulate your breathing. Hence, you begin to regulate your heartbeat. This in turn regulates your blood flow. An optimal level of oxygen hence flows to your brain. This helps you clear your flooded head… And voila! You slowly begin to think more rationally than before. It’s a great long term stress reduction technique.

So here you go. 3 fantastic stress reduction techniques that actually work.

If you have any stress busters then please feel free to share.

Stress is the trash of modern life – we all generate it but if you don’t dispose of it properly, it will pile up and overtake your life – Danzae Pace

Lets be honest for one second. Our jobs are hectic. Jumping from one task to another so we can finish all our never-ending to-do lists. All of this never-ending work builds up a lot of stress.

Not managing stress properly leads to some serious problems such as high blood pressure, risk of a stroke and even heart disease. Lets not forget the mental illnesses that develop such as anxiety, fear, distrust and insecurity.

Stress at work can affect every one of us and in the U.S. alone, it is the cause of 60- 90% medical visits. This time is a huge cost to companies because stress takes time away from finishing projects and not to mention the loss of sick days.

Managing the killer Stress

A study conducted by a group of scientist at the University of Arizona, revealed that doing limited amounts of mindful meditation practice helps reduce stress and instill a positive state of mind.

What is mindful meditation?

Mindful meditation technique has been around for a very long time. The point of mindful meditation is to focus the mind to be present in the moment. Not thinking about the past or worrying about it and not looking at the future. Being mindful helps reduce daily stress and instills inner peace.

You can enjoy the amazing benefits of mindful meditation anywhere and anytime. Mindfulness will become a part of your daily life as long as you create the habit of practicing it daily or weekly.

Mindfulness Meditation Relieves stress

Going further into the meaning of mindful, you soon realize that mindful extends to:

1. Openness
2. Concentration
3. Control

Openness

Being present in the moment helps you expand your mind beyond mental limitations. Any reservations about any subject can be looked at with out passing any judgment. Not criticizing anything instead  letting the moment flow. This will open your heart and mind to new possibilities. Sometimes what you once thought to be a mistake or a problem will be viewed as an opportunity.

My first meditation practices always consisted of different judgmental thoughts.

• “I can’t do this”
• “How useless is it to sit here”
• “I am so weak that I am doing this”

These thoughts would hook me into a negative cycle. I persevered and kept meditating. Couple of months later I was able to let all these thoughts drift by in my mind without getting hooked on them.

Concentration

The basis of mindfulness stems from paying attention. To be mindful is to be focused and aware. The meditation practice itself requires extended period of time to focus only on the sensations of breathing.

Being focused on a particular task is increasingly becoming difficult in the modern world. With our constant emails, text messages and meetings, it becomes very hard to stay focused.

Finishing a simple task of reading a report or an article cannot be done without your mind itching to check the email or your phone. These are the habits that have built up over time in our corporate world that affect us.

Mindfulness combats these distractions by going back to the basics of doing nothing but breathing. Just breathing.

Quick Test

Stop doing every thing and close your eyes. Then focus on your breathing for 3 minutes. Focus your mind on the inhalation and exhalation. During this time count how many times your mind wandered off. Go ahead, I will wait.

Bet your mind wandered offmore than once.

Control/Will power

Stressful situations make us lose focus of what the actual problem is. Our mind’s become riddled with negative thoughts. These thoughts in turn just complicate the matter even more.

Mindfulness allows us to view the “reality” of the problem by helping us to let go of judgmental thoughts and any criticism. These thoughts merely become a momentary flame that diffuse in a second. This detachment helps you see the problem for what it actually is rather than what you “perceive” the problem to be.

A guided mindfulness meditation with Kabatt Zinn

Leave Stress behind through Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a simple journey through the waters of your mind. Sometimes the boat that you travel on will face many hurricanes. These hurricanes will be dark, windy and the waves will swallow you whole. But Mindfulness will be the propeller that helps you push through the storms to beaming sun of hope and peace.

Stressful times will always take us to dark places that we do not want to go. It is our jobs to equip ourselves with the best weapons to help bring us back to balance.

What are some other killers tips I left out?

Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Nothing is that important. Just lie down ~ Natalie Goldberg

Stress is all around us. It creeps up on our day when we least expect it. When it does, it consumes our mind and body. We start loosing focus of the task at hand and start to give into negative thoughts. Meditation for stress relief will help combat any stress and get you focused in no time.

Meditation helps regain control of your body and mind. Starting with body scan meditation, you will focus on muscle relaxation then move towards different stress relief exercises and meditation.

During these stress relief meditations the focus will be on practicing deep breath and muscle relaxation techniques. Do not be concerned right now about what stress relief exercises are good. Just take some time to try one of the meditation techniques.

Stress Management 101

You might be feeling helpless at first. The endless things you have to do or bills you have to pay. Things just keep piling on. These items will attack your thoughts and take over your mind.

Take charge of your thoughts

Having control over your thoughts is the first step to managing stress. It is in your thoughts that all the negative storylines keep hooking your inner self to a pessimistic reality.

Write the floating negative thoughts on a piece of paper. Any thought that appears in your mind that causes any anxiety just write it down.  Let it all go.

I spend 20 minutes sometimes writing anything on my mind.It cleans my mind and helps me focus.

Simple Stress Relief Technique

• Take a piece of paper.
• Write down all thoughts.
• Rate each thought 1 – 5. 1 = least stressed, 5 = most stressed.
• Organize the list from highest to lowest.

Now reflect on the list. Look at the top most items that are causing you stress and reflect on “Why?”. Why is it so stressful? What is the true reason that you are stressed? This is to help you get to the root issue of the problem.

Our tendency is to get stressed about situations we have no control over. By reflecting, you can focus on your primary role in each situation. You can work backwards and create a stress action plan for you to accomplish those tasks.

Stress Relief Breathing Exercises

Breathing exercises can be performed with ease and comfort. Not only do they relieve stress, deep breathing can be done anywhere and any time. This is why this meditation technique is used by a lot of people. You can do it standing in the elevator, train or office.

The technique:

1. Sit or stand in a comfortable position.
2. Inhale very slowly. Fill up your lungs.
3. Hold your breath for 5 seconds.
4. Exhale slowly through your mouth
5. Rinse and repeat, as many times you want.

As you breathe slowly your blood pressure will decrease and so will the level of stress in your mind.

Guided Visual Meditation

Visual meditation is not accepted by some because they believe the visualizations actually take away from the meditation itself. The visualization is a “distraction”. In my experience, I have found visual meditation to be a great stress reliever and help’s me manage stress during days.

Visualization meditation deals with focusing on any object for an extended period of time. This object could be the tip of your nose or a the scent of a candle. The focus is the object itself.

The visualization will shift your mental focus away from the stressful situation and towards another object. This will help you reduce stress and relax.

The Technique:

1. Sit or stand in a comfortable position.
2. Find an item to focus on. I like to light a candle in my room.
3. Inhale into your belly through your nose.
4. Hold your breath for 5 seconds.
5. Focus your eyes on the object. Imagine you are the object. In my case, I would try to feel the heat and movement of the flame.
6. Exhale slowly through your mouth.

Do this for as long you feel comfortable. I have practiced this enough where I can stand in a bus and focus on any object to bring myself some peace of mind. It takes a lot of practice but you can get there. Take your time and find that place of relaxation.

Got any meditation techniques that can help fight stress?